Product Description

Written when Orwell was a struggling writer in his twenties, the book documents his 'first contact with poverty': sleeping in bug-infested hostels and doss houses, working as a dishwasher in Paris, surviving on scraps and cigarette butts, living alongside tramps, a star-gazing pavement artist and a starving Russian ex-army captain. Exposing a shocking, previously hidden world to readers, Orwell gave a human face to poverty, and in doing so, found his voice as a great writer.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #131636 in Books
• Published on: 2003-06-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

About the Author
Eric Arthur Blair (George Orwell) was born in India in 1903. He was educated at Eton, served with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, and worked in Britain as a private tutor, schoolteacher, bookshop assistant and journalist. In 1936, Orwell went to fight for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War and was wounded. In 1938 he was admitted into a sanatorium and from then on was never fully fit. George Orwell died in London in 1950.

Customer Reviews

A sobering book
George Orwell felt awkward for being middle class, once he started to make a bit of money as an author this added to his awkwardness and he spent a lot of time in dank and impoverished surroundings.

This book is largely autobiographic, it tells of his time spent with the homeless. Orwell would pretend to be a tramp, not just pretend - he would live as a tramp from time to time. It was his time as a tramp that feed the ideas in this book.

Orwell writes about the camaraderie in the tramp community with warmth, you can feel his fondness for the people he is writing about.

The tramp experience covers only the second part of the book.

The first part describes the life of Parisian hotel/restaurant kitchen workers. It isn't glamorous. It is a life devoid of love, warmth, and happiness. Boris is the star of the "Paris" part of this book.

This is not only one of Orwell's finest pieces of work, it is a book that changes how you feel about life. When I read this book I was struggling financially - but this book put things in perspective, and I still imagine scenes in this book when times are hard.

The contrast between the "Paris" and "London" aspects of the book couldn't be more different, even though both are concerning that corner of society who seem to have nothing.

Read this book on the bus/train on the commute to work and you'll get lost in the dark visuals it inspires. The book had many place names and people's names removed for fear of being libellous, at first this seems clumsy but you get used to it.

Down and Out - read it
If ever there was a book deserving the title 'modern classic', this is it. A thought provoking and subtle collection of anecdotes that will make you laugh and out loud and balk at the extremes of poverty described in equal measure. The fact that Orwell avoides self indulgence and manages to evoke a genuine sense of compassion is truely remarkable and whatever your political orientation, having read this book it is hard to feel anything but respect for the man.

Despite its age, down and out still strikes a resonant chord in the modern world and while much has changed in the intervening years, there are still enough parralels with todays society to make you take stock of the world we live in.

I greatly enjoyed this book and recommend everyone to read it.

An under-rated classic
I was completely captured by this book from the first page. Having only previously read "Animal Farm" and "Nineteen Eighty-Four" I thought that it was time to explore some early Orwell and make a comparison. Much like with musicians it is usual their early work that they get the most respect for and I feel that it should be the same case here. You get lost in the book and really feel like you are down and out at times, such is the power of the text.

Granted, it is not as fundamentaly powerful as the two mentioned books but it has a different kind of message to it completely, it is a true story for the most part. Whereas "Nineteen Eighty-Four" strikes me as slightly pretentious this is an honest book from an honest and humble, young aspiring writer.

In short the book is a good days reading, excellent when it is raining like when I read it because you get sucked into it. Unlike other, similar down and out stories the book escapes from appearing monotone in your head and depressing, possibly because Orwell turned into a cult hero showing there is hope for all of us.